


MAG XX - Depths

by soupgoblin



Series: Fake Statements [1]
Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Original Statement (The Magnus Archives), Statement Fic (The Magnus Archives), thalassophobia, the vast
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-14
Updated: 2020-05-14
Packaged: 2021-03-02 17:02:36
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,636
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24180268
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/soupgoblin/pseuds/soupgoblin
Summary: Case #0151105 Statement of Maeve Ford, regarding an incident that occurred during a boat trip. Original statement given May 11th 2015. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London.
Series: Fake Statements [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1885207
Comments: 5
Kudos: 7





	MAG XX - Depths

**Author's Note:**

> a random statement set around season 1, which I wrote to procrastinate everything else I'm writing. is it particularly good? no. is it scary though? also no. is it basically me just yelling about how scary the ocean is for 3000+ words? yes. the ocean's real scary y'all

[Tape clicks on.]

ARCHIVIST

Statement of Maeve Ford, regarding an incident that occurred during a boat trip. Original statement given May 11th 2015\. Audio recording by Jonathan Sims, head archivist of the Magnus Institute, London. Statement begins.

ARCHIVIST (STATEMENT)

Were you ever scared of sharks in the pool? I know I was. As a child I would venture down to the deep end, chasing after a float or doing lengths. I could see right to the end of the pool wherever I was, but as soon as the floor fell out beneath my legs, being exposed on all sides made it feel like I had so many blind spots I couldn’t see anything at all. I knew there was nothing there, obviously, I wasn’t an idiot. But the deeper I got the further the floor would fall out from under me, and I would panic that below me, just out of sight, a shark could be barrelling towards me. I just needed to get out of the water _._ I just needed to _get out_. So then I would swim as fast as I could to the side of the pool, the bubbles my small legs kicked up feeling uncomfortably like something just nipping at my toes – until I reached the side and pulled myself out, peering into the obviously empty water just to be sure. I was actually pretty surprised when I first heard other people talking about playing the same little game. I assumed it was something only I did since it seemed so irrational. I guess it’s not that strange that so many kids wold have this fear though. I mean, there’s a lot of dangerous stuff in the water. I know, I know, sharks aren’t actually evil and they hardly kill any people. They’re more scared of us and all that. Maybe some people would say so many kids got frightened because of the bad reputation sharks have gotten in movies. But I’ve never seen Jaws. I think the scariest shark movie I’d encountered as a kid was Finding Nemo. No, I think there’s something deeper, a more instinctual fear of being exposed, out of your element. It doesn’t have to be sharks, and maybe that part is inspired by movies, I don’t know. You just know you’re vulnerable and... well, out of your depth, if you’ll excuse the phrase. Anyway, my point is I think it’s pretty normal to be scared of the water at least a little bit, but it wasn’t a fear that controlled my life. I mean sure, I’m not a huge fan of the ocean but that was mostly just because it’s cold and I didn’t like the salt water getting in my eyes, and I didn’t go swimming because I just didn’t enjoy it as a sport. I – I just need you need to understand, I was scared of the ocean, but I was also scared of fire and caves and talking to strangers and spiders and global warming – am still afraid I suppose. You just need to understand this wasn’t some fear induced hallucination triggered by a deep-set lifelong phobia. I know what I saw was real. I’m not crazy, it’s –

I suppose I should start from the beginning. I work as a journalist which means I end up travelling a lot and if I’m asked to cover a story somewhere particularly far out work will usually cover my travel. I don’t remember thinking there was anything weird about my boss telling me I was going to be travelling by boat. I was going to some island just off the coast. The Isle of Mam, I think it was called? I’d never heard of it, but my geography is sketchy at best and I honestly wasn’t invested enough to do any follow up. I can’t even remember what the story was anymore, something about an endangered species returning maybe? It’s fuzzy. Anyway, on the 15th of March I arrived at the town in the morning, as instructed. I noticed as I drove through that there didn’t seem to be anyone on the streets – and in fact I hadn’t seen any people since I pulled off the highway. But it was bad weather at the time and a pretty small town, so I brushed it off as people keeping out of the wind. The first people I saw were maybe ten-ish men on the docks, all loading what seemed to be identical sealed up cardboard boxes onto a ship. It didn’t look like a ferry boat, which I assumed the vessel taking me to the island would be. My nautical knowledge is pretty limited, I’d say it looked more like a fishing boat… or a trawler maybe? I’m not sure. Whatever it was, it was rusted along more sides than I was comfortable with and all paint had long since been chipped away so I couldn’t see any name. The men loading the ship looked pretty normal I guess? They were all dressed similarly in practical clothes and none of them wore a jacket which struck me as odd for a cold day. None of them were speaking either as they loaded the ship, and as I got closer it looked almost like they had no emotion at all. Their eyes were glassy and grey – I remember because they all had exactly the same coloured eyes. It was like they mirrored the darkening clouds above. Spray was flinging up and splashing them as they crossed onto the ship but despite how cold it must have been I don’t think I saw a single one of them flinch. Or maybe they were just hardened sailors getting on with their job. Hindsight puts things in a pretty different light and knowing what happened next it’s hard not to think back on where everything might have gone wrong, to look for someone to blame. I know I still got on the boat in the end so maybe at the time I really did think it was nothing. And it wasn’t as if there was any other way to the island. Every other boat was firmly tied up and it looked like there hadn’t been any other activity here for weeks. I approached one of the men and asked him if this was the boat that travelled to Mam. He looked at me as if I had asked the most obvious question in the world and nodded yes, before turning back to the pile of boxes. No one questioned me as I walked onto the deck or even seemed to acknowledge I was there so I kind of just assumed I must be in the right place, and once they finished loading and the engine started up with a shudder, no one acted like I was out of place, so I figured they were probably just antisocial.

I was a little weirded out at this point but not properly alarmed, and for a while there was nothing that made me suspect I should be anything other than that. I was a little wary of the crew, but they kept to themselves, doing… whatever it was they were doing, and the ship didn’t seem to have fallen apart yet so I sat on a box on the deck and waited. Maybe half an hour in I looked up from my phone. There had been a bit of a mist over the water before, kind of a haze in the distance from the speckled rain, but the sky was gradually beginning to clear and I had a better view now. We were still in eye shot of the mainland, which wasn’t surprising as we were sailing fairly slowly. I was a little unsettled by the fact that in the opposite direction I could still only see ocean right up to the horizon. Where I had assumed the island was just obscured from my view there was only water stretching on and on. I called over a crew member nervously and asked him when we would be arriving. He smiled – although it didn’t quite reach his eyes – and informed me that the captain says it should be another half hour, is there something wrong? I was planning on asking why I couldn’t see Mam if it was so close but there was something in the way he was looked at me… I thanked him and turned away. Something was definitely wrong at this point, but there wasn’t exactly anything I could do about it was there? I mean, I knew where the mainland was in theory, but I wasn’t about to jump overboard and the closest ships I could see were tankers hugging the horizon miles away, so I decided my best bet would be to stay low and wait it out. We couldn’t sail forever, right? And if I was being kidnapped or something I’d have a better shot at escaping when there was actually somewhere to escape to. So, I went to stand up at the railings, disguising my careful surveillance of the mainland as nausea. I knew practically there was no way I could swim back that far but I was comforted by at least knowing where we were, that we weren’t half way across the world yet. I remembered the boxes they had been loading and was filled with the distinct feeling that I would not like what I saw if I managed to open them. I was cursing myself for getting on a random, sketchy boat without asking any questions, but mostly I was just trying to block out what was happening to stop myself panicking. The sea beneath us was beginning to look… deep. It wasn’t my biggest problem right then but even considering the possibility of having to jump down, down into that… that endless blue, so strong it hurt my head to think about just how much water we were being kept out of by a few fragile sheets of metal, how far into the earth’s bowels that darkness must reach. I tried not to think about how easy it would be for something to lurk just below that surface and go completely unnoticed. I did try asking other crew how long it would be, but I always got the same answer, and the same glassy stare, and despite the fact the boat was definitely still moving the land didn’t actually seem to be getting any further away, so after maybe an hour I resigned to keep quiet and tried not to attract any attention to myself.

I was watching the patterns in the water. Clouds cast drifting shadows as if they were swimming alongside us and the clashing currents and islands of kelp made a patchwork on the ocean’s surface. It actually took me an embarrassing amount of time as a kid to realise it was the clouds making those dark silhouettes in the sea. I’d convince myself it was something beneath the water, some unknowable creature just out of view, it’s shadow blocking out the sea floor. With just a shadow I could convince myself anything was down there. Did you know that its estimated there could be over 10 million undiscovered species in the ocean? I hate thinking about that. I know they’re all at the bottom of the ocean, far deeper than any human would accidentally stumble upon, but knowing they’re in there, that they could be below me with nothing but miles of crushing water separating me from bizarre and deadly creatures so far from everything we know – it’s not a feeling I enjoy. But I would be lying if I said I hated looking at the changing water drifting and flowing in spirals. It was mesmerising. And it was as I was staring at them that I- well I don’t know what happened. Maybe I leaned over too far. Maybe I was pushed. Maybe the morbid l'appel du vide grew so strong I couldn’t stop myself tipping slowly over the edge. I don’t remember it happening. I know I was standing, staring at the shifting waters, and then I was falling.

And then cold.

The ocean is so cold, at first I couldn’t think, couldn’t breathe, couldn’t see, all I could feel was the burning cold. It happened so fast I couldn’t process what was happening, I just thrashed out in blind panic and reflex in the cold, black nothing I found myself encased in, until after the longest moment of my life I broke the surface and air flooded my lungs. I reached out blindly to where I thought the ship should be, lungs still stinging and limbs refusing to remember the swimming strokes I had practiced so many times, and my hand fell limply into the water. I didn’t know what was happening, I just needed to be out of the water. I didn’t stop to catch my breath, I just wanted to grab something, grab anything and crawl out, far away from the beckoning depths I was convinced I could not resurface from a second time. But I still had just enough of a grasp on my senses that when desperate thrashing didn’t put me in reach of the boat, I took a breath and started treading water, blinking the salt out of my eyes so I could find my way out.

And the boat wasn’t there. It made sense that I would have gotten myself turned around as I panicked under the water, but when I turned it just wasn’t there. I spun around until I was dizzy and the boat was _gone_. _Every_ boat was gone. I couldn’t see so much as a piece of driftwood until the edge of the world. And worst of all, as I spun desperately in circles, I realised with dawning horror that I could no longer see the mainland. Not in any direction. But I know we could see the land from where we were. I know because I was watching it the whole time on the boat, I didn’t let it out my sight. I should have been able to see the land from there. It should have been there. But it was just… gone. An idea rose in me, unbidden, and almost the second it entered my brain, I knew in my soul it was the absolute truth. You can laugh but I know it was. The land wasn’t just out of reach. It was _gone_. And not just England, not just the point I set off from. Everything was. As I stared out at the now gentle waves rolling steadily outwards, stretching infinitely into oblivion, I had never been more sure of anything in my life than I was in that moment that I was the only thing left in the entire world.

As I came to terms with this, it was like all at once I could feel every inch of water falling from beneath me, my stomach dropping out as if I was in a descending elevator. It was so impossibly deep. Nothing should be able to be that deep. If this ocean had a bed, it was so far from anything we could know, it would stand as an end to nothing but ourselves. And it was so dark, so blue. It was like it was taunting me.

_Think of how much water there must be to get a blue this dark. Think how easy it would be to hide in a blue so strong. You can’t even see your own feet. What else could be just out of your reach? Why don’t you come down and see?_

It made me feel sick. The need to be out of the water grew so strong I couldn’t think past it, everything in my head was shutting down in the wake of the desperate compulsion to be out of the water, away, standing on ground nothing can rise from. It was all I could think, I was running out of time, there was _something coming_. I wanted to swim away, to race frantically to the edge, but there was no edge. There was no end to the water and I knew as surely as I knew no land or ship or piece of flotsam would ever disturb these waters, that I could swim as far as I wanted and it would never change a thing. There was no escape, not from this place and not from whatever I _knew_ was rising steadily upwards from below me. There was nowhere to hide, no corner to back into. Just endless void. A blackness so deep nothing will ever penetrate it. The sky, cloudless and bright, laughed at me from far away, out of reach. Drifting shadows in the water below moved slowly and aimlessly. It felt for a moment like they were circling me, and the thought of that would have made me laugh if I wasn’t so breathless from fear. Circling me would suggest I was some sort of centre to this place, which would imply it had any scale or direction at all. Even then, I was so very small here. Always was I suppose. Creatures of incomprehensible scale brushed just below me, _just_ out of view. I was nothing to them. I didn’t _matter_. I couldn’t breathe. _There’s plenty of space down here_ the creatures sang, except they do not sing because they are not human and they are not alive and speech is a construct made by beings so tiny they may as well not exist. They are vast and so close and just out of reach. Nipping at my toes. I. Can’t. Breathe.

You know, I’ve never been scared of drowning. Isn’t that strange? All that terror about the water, about the all-encompassing, suffocating depths stretching out on every side forever and ever, and yet I’ve never been scared of the actual biggest threat in that situation. I’m certainly not saying I want to drown, but It’s not like I want to die any other way either, and I’m going to have to die some way or another.

I didn’t want to know what below me in that water.

But it was going to come whether I was facing it or not.

Sometimes, when I imagined the shark in the swimming pool with me, I would dive to the bottom so nothing could come up below me. To have one angle protected. From my position cross legged on the tiled floor I could almost see in every direction.

I knew there was no floor to the darkness below me.

But I sank down into it anyway.

I opened my eyes under the water, and I could barely see a foot in front of my hand, the world brown and shifting, but I couldn’t go back to the surface now. Maybe there had never been a surface at all. There certainly wasn’t one any more. I looked down, or perhaps it was up, or sideways, because there is no direction and there has never been, and far, far away, through the haze of thick, dark water blotting my vision, I saw one eye slowly open. It was trained on me.

I woke up in hospital on the 17th of March. I was told I had fallen off the edge of the boat and passed out before being dragged out by a crew member and taken back to the shore for hospitalisation. According to the crewmember’s reports, I appeared to have passed out immediately upon impact with the water. Doctors told me I had inhaled a lot of water and was at risk of hypothermia, but there wasn’t any serious damage and I was let out soon after. I asked my boss about my assignment when I finally went back to work but she didn’t recall asking me to cover any stories on islands and she definitely didn’t remember making any travel arrangements for me. I googled Mam when I got home, although I already knew what I would find. It never did exist. I would have gone back to the town to investigate more but I guess my curiosity isn’t quite as strong as it used to be. So I came to give you my statement. I don’t care if you believe me or not I just… I just needed to tell someone. I uh…

I think I’ll be avoiding the local pool for a bit.

ARCHIVIST

Statement ends. There’s not that much follow up possible with this one. I can confirm that the town Ms Ford mentioned is real and known for its fishing docks, and as she said, the Isle of Mam, as far as I can see, has never existed. I can’t really say about the boat she travelled on without a name, but the ship’s cargo puts me in mind of… previous statements. I have my suspicions about what could have been in those boxes but they’re just that - suspicions. Hospital and coast guard records for the area match up the story from the doctors: Ms Ford fell over the side of the boat, passing out immediately, and was pulled out and taken to hospital by the crew of the fishing vessel she was on. I can also confirm Ms Ford was employed as a journalist what at the time of giving this statement. Unfortunately she could not be approached for a follow up statement as police records show she was reported missing a month after giving this statement and the case has been cold ever since. I am assured by the landlord I contacted that he has it in confidence that it was entirely due to plumbing issues that the only thing amiss in her apartment after she disappeared was the fact that every single thing was completely soaking wet. End recording.

[Tape clicks off.]

**Author's Note:**

> you stay out da wadah fat kid glass shark comin for you. he gitchu dawn n dat bad deep wadah dat daaaahk wadah fat kid no go. glass shark come to dat dark wadah he gitchu, fat kid. you swim aroun he bite your trunks right off you tubby little fish. you swim all you want flop n flap around glass shark gon come! glass shark behind you fat kid you gotta sweeeeeeem


End file.
